﻿Traditional, not conventionaL.﻿

Acupuncture and Hay Fever (August 19, 2014)

Allergic rhinitis (inflammation of the nasal airways) specifically caused by an allergy to grass pollen is called hay fever, and there’s a lot of it around. The conventional treatment is to use various pharmaceuticals and (somehow) avoid pollen. You can also try allergy shots -- if you have tons of money (insurance rarely covers them) and lots of time (you start with three injections per week, and the duration of treatment is up to five years). After all that you'll find that they don't work any better than a placebo (if the practice of the very busy allergist I transcribed office notes for in my younger years was any indication, that is).

I apologize if that paragraph sounded a little familiar. That’s because it is a partial reprise of an article I wrote a few months ago, which cautiously suggested that some people might find acupuncture a viable alternative to conventional therapy for hay fever and allergic rhinitis. I’d like to make that same suggestion again, only a little more strongly this time.

Acupuncture “has been proved through controlled trials to be an effective treatment” for allergic rhinitis and hay fever, says the World Health Organization. Two studies in 2013 further supported that assertion, one finding that three acupuncture treatments per week for four weeks resulted in considerable improvement in both nasal and non-nasal symptoms, and the other finding the same plus a decrease in the need for antihistamines.

In addition to acupuncture treatment, astragalus (or huang qi) is a Chinese herb that has been shown to be of particular benefit in allergic rhinitis. Herbs are rarely used singly in Chinese medicine – using herbs together is thought to reduce the side effects that might occur with single herb use and to increase their effectiveness. There are several traditional herbal combinations that are commonly used for allergic rhinitis and hay fever, but on investigation I ran smack into a new one – “biminne” -- that didn’t even SOUND Chinese to me, and moreover that was being touted in more than one semi-respectable Western publication in place of the formulas I was familiar with. Mmmph.

After searching around on Pub Med, my favorite websites and the internet generally for a couple of hours, and finding unbelievably little real information on this new formula, here is my best guess as to what is probably going on with biminne. A company put a few non-traditional herbs together with astragalus, gave it a name and financed a small study that was good enough to get published in a respectable journal. And voilà! Its "unique combination" is now THE Chinese Herbal Treatment For Hay Fever for internet researchers.

Now, I’m not saying that biminne doesn’t work. But a single study of fewer than 60 people is no justification for the horns that are being tooted on its behalf. Here is something that is easy to do in alternative medicine; take a substance or technique that is generally thought to have a particular effect, put your own proprietary spin on it, finance a small study of it and then flog it to the major journals until someone takes it up and YOU become the authoritative source for something that is really generic. We saw this exact same thing done in chiropractic a couple of years ago with an obscure type of neck adjustment that managed to position itself as The Chiropractic Adjustment That Lowers Blood Pressure. Oh, the humanity... .